Bishop
Hieromartyr Uar (in the world Pyotr Alekseevich Shmarin) was born on October 11, 1880, in the village of Novo-Sitovka of Tambov Governorate, into a poor peasant family. His father died early, and his mother raised the children alone. From the age of six, Pyotr helped his mother with the household.
A village priest, seeing that Pyotr was unusually gifted for his age, persuaded his mother to send him to school, took all expenses upon himself, and later helped him finish gymnasium and seminary. After graduating from the seminary, Pyotr Alekseevich worked as a teacher, married, and soon was ordained a deacon and sent to serve in the Saratov diocese. On October 28, 1910, Deacon Pyotr was ordained to the priesthood for a church located on the island of Manchinsaari on Lake Ladoga in Finland, not far from the Valaam Monastery. The parishioners respected and loved him.
In 1914 he was drafted into the army, and after the revolution he moved with his family to Petrograd. In 1918 his wife and children fell ill with typhus, and Klavdiya Georgievna died. Father Pyotr was left with six orphans.
Soon Father Pyotr was given a parish in the village of Tyutchevo. There he was arrested several times, but the arrests were brief. The main demand was that he remove his clerical rank, to which the priest always gave an категорический refusal.
In 1926, Priest Pyotr Shmarin was tonsured a monk with the name Uar and was consecrated Bishop of Lipetsk.
In 1935 the authorities arrested him for anti-Soviet agitation, and he was sentenced to eight years of imprisonment. The hierarch was held in a barrack with those convicted under political articles, but in 1938 he was transferred to a barrack where there were only criminal offenders. On September 23, 1938, they murdered Bishop Uar. He was buried in the cemetery of the Samara section of the Karaganda camp.
